Five minutes into reading my twitter stream I learned of the rape of a five year old in Delhi, the rape of a young mother in Gurgaon, and of a girl in Morocco who committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist.
Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, which I’ve been thinking of visiting, I read about the spate of “white van abductions”, in the tradition of Michael Ondaatji’s “Anil’s Ghost”.
A new survey in India reveals that more that while more than half the population lack toilets, a higher percentage owns a mobile phone. A frightening percentage lack access to untreated drinking water (as was mentioned also in a WHO survey). They said in that WHO survey that while enormous progress had been made in Africa and other areas of the world, with regard to access to cleaner drinking water and public sanitation, India was holding back the global success rates.
I survived for a longer time on Twitter than on the the Channel 2 TV news tonight, which was upbeat over Israel’s successes in Gaza. The killing of 25 “terrorists” (they actually said that) gave The Chief of Staff the opportunity to tell us that whenever the enemy strike at us, we’ll hit them back even harder. It has already been forgotten that Israel started the current round.
While the 25 terrorists remained nameless, the reportage moved on to cover the residents of the south as they begin to emerge from their shelters and get back to a normal life, but by that time we had switched off the news to eat our dinner in peace. In the same spirit, I’m going to try to get back to sleep. It’s a mistake to read Twitter in the night.